Marriage is under attack in Rhode Island and Maryland, with same-sex marriage activists seeking to quickly push gay marriage legislation through in both states. We urgently need your help. If you live in Rhode Island or Maryland, please click here to take action in your state today. (Click here for Rhode Island.Click here for Maryland)

And all of us need to forward this message to anyone we know who lives in either Rhode Island or Maryland.

Activists in Rhode Island are already celebrating…The Washington Post says same-sex marriage in Maryland is “almost a done deal.” But as a wise man once said, “If it were a done deal, it would be done already.” We’ve seen before what happens when voters stand up and make their voices heard. Even supposedly “inevitable” same-sex marriage bills were derailed in New York and New Jersey when voters started calling their legislators.

It’s time to do it again. If you live in Rhode Island or Maryland, please click here to contact your legislators. (Click here for Rhode Island. Click here for Maryland) Do it right now. And if you know someone who lives in either Rhode Island or Maryland, please forward this message to them right now, urging them to stand up for marriage. We need all hands on deck. Please do what you can today.

Already, Bishop Tobin and other religious and community leaders have begun speaking out in Rhode Island. Yesterday, NOM joined the effort, launching a TV ad campaign urging Rhode Islanders to contact their elected officials.

As NOM Rhode Island Executive Director Christopher Plante said yesterday, “Lincoln Chafee got just 36% of the vote in the recent election . . . Our message is that getting 36% of the vote is no mandate to redefine the institution of marriage for all of Rhode Island society.” With polls showing that 80% of Rhode Islanders want to vote on marriage, Plante continued: “If legislators in Rhode Island wish to redefine marriage, they should put this issue on the ballot where the people themselves can decide if they wish to abandon one of the most fundamental institutions of society.”

5 responses to “Marriage Under Attack in Rhode Island and Maryland!”

No need for alarm: none of the proposals being considered in Maryland or Rhode Island would change the law with regard to heterosexual marriage. Male/female couples will still be able to apply for marriage licenses, commit to each other and take marriage vows, engage in civil marriage, and dissolve their marriages per state law. This new legislation wouldn’t “redefine marriage,” because same sex marriage would be optional. If you like the old system, it will still be exactly the same.

So, no worries. If you have a problem with other people’s marriages, you can still judge them the way you always have. You just won’t have the right to rip their marriages apart…and why should you?

The fallacy in your argument here is pretty obvious: you say that by adding an additional definition to marriage (ie: it now includes male-male and female-female unions) it does not “redefine marriage.” Uh, are you serious that is the argument you want to make? Obviously you do want marriage redefined and you are crazy (or disingenuous) to believe that that will not have any effect on “traditional” marriages. The idea of marriage has been the union of the sexes to provide family stability for the good of our children and our communities. Why would you want to threaten that fundamental unit of our society so that a small group of troubled people can feel better about themselves? If you want tax benefits and visitation rights, then get civil unions! But don’t take away a critical institution for protecting our society’s children.

Your argument is specious. Same-sex couples are allowed to marry in Massachusetts. However, mixed-sex couples have been allowed to marry there for centuries, and are still permitted to marry.

So, you could envision three hypothetical mixed-sex couples: one couple who married decades ago and are now dead, another couple who married prior to 2003 and are still married, and a third couple who married after 2003 and are still married.

My argument is that none of the laws have changed with regard to heterosexual marriage. You say that “obviously” marriage has been redefined.

I am right, of course–the laws did not change with regard to heterosexual marriage. But are you correct, too? Has heterosexual marriage changed in some way? If your contention were true, then there would be some difference between the three hypothetical couples that I presented. Is there a difference between those three mixed-sex marriages? Tell me.

You write that I am crazy “to believe that that will not have any effect on “traditional” marriages.” I believe in things that are concrete and observable. What is the concrete and observable effect on “traditional” marriages that you envision? Describe it in a way that another human being could actually verify whether this elusive effect actually happened. If you think that the effect hasn’t occurred yet, feel free to speak of what the effect will be in the future.

Actually, his point about re-defining marriage is valid and salient. When you re-define something (by giving it a new definition) you re-define it.

Same-sex couples are allowed to marry in Massachusetts.

How does the Who song go? “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”? The bureaucratic ability to own a certificate to an institution with the same name doesn’t make it the same institution at all.

You are trying to counter TIM’s argument about a changed institution with claims that it has the same name.

But it isn’t the same.

So, you could envision three hypothetical mixed-sex couples: one couple who married decades ago and are now dead, another couple who married prior to 2003 and are still married, and a third couple who married after 2003 and are still married.

Where can these couples go to get explicit recognition of their unique family formation (the natural formation through procreation) and the social concerns it creates? Where can these couples sue for marriage equality — the equal recognition of the rights and responsibilities of the man, woman and child they potentially have together?

Only if they can, and only if the government can explicitly target the unique concerns of procreation by promoting the uniting, love and tolerance of the two people who combined their identity to create a new identity, does the same marriage institution exist.

But you need to tell me how that exists when every recognition of unique capacity of a man and a woman is (as the Massachusetts supreme court alluded) is the moral equivalence of white supremacy.

What changed? The institution they belonged to. When did it change? Not when any new person got married, it changed when their Supreme Court called the social concern of procreation and marriage equality — true marriage equality — to be an unforgivable act of intolerance that required abolition without any legislative or democratic say on the matter.

The marriage they had before that day turned into something else after that day. Something verbotten to be recognized.

The worst case scenario from this is the heterosexual couple with kids between them somehow by the example of the state believes it is no different in responsibility, capacity, or culpability as a homosexual couple. They believe any two people can raise their children as well as them, that their own sexual inclinations make the most important and immutable pursuit of marriage, and therefore are more inclined to neglect their greater responsibility to their own children. The worst case scenario is when anyone who otherwise wouldn’t now believes the tenets of the homosexual view of marriage, and subscribe to Homer Simpson’s plan for sanitation management “let someone else take care of it”.

The worst case scenario from this is the heterosexual couple with kids between them somehow by the example of the state believes it is no different in responsibility, capacity, or culpability as a homosexual couple.

This example is non-unique. A heterosexual can believe whatever they want about marriage, without regard to the legal status of their neighbors’ marriage. It is possible for a heterosexual couple to change their views about marriage because same-sex marriage becomes legal, but it is also possible for a heterosexual couple to maintain consistent views about marriage when same-sex marriage is legalized. Further, it is possible for heterosexual couples to change their views about marriage even without the legalization of same-sex marriage.